The track toward Mintaro Hut hugged the river. Alexa wished she could leave it behind. She felt like the river was following her, instead of the other way around. She eyed the bulwark of mountains lining either side, spilling their guts in roaring ribbon falls. Remnants of a prior landslip stopped just short of the trail. Alexa figured this was damage from the recent storm. A bag of rocks—like the ones around the helicopter pad—had been set down right on the path. She trampled waist-high ferns and grass verges to get around it.
Fifty yards up was another bag of rocks. BULK BAG was written on the side. She had thought the pilots dumped the rock, instead of setting down the whole bag. Using helicopters made sense. There were no roads. She guessed a ranger spread the contents. First they’d have to deal with the latest landslide.
She imagined the dammed-up Luxers behind her, disappointed they’d have to turn around. Every day new trampers, both independents and Luxers, started the hike. There would be a logjam.
Not my problem. Steadman Willis would be wedged among them. She’d been interested in what he had to say, and had stupidly blushed when he’d caught her eye. Bruce wasn’t the only trout flashing in the river.
Now she’d never see Stead again. A tramping crush, crushed.
She looked ahead, tried to see how long she would be in this flat, fraught valley. For a surprise moment, the rain ceased and sunlight flickered across the fern field valley. Milford Track dissolved into mist, the forest obscured. Bush, the Kiwis called it. The landslide and skeleton had cost her two hours. Now was when she should be arriving at the hut. Charlie would start to worry. She picked up her pace, fingering the bone nestled in her pocket.
Another DANGER sign caught her attention. She scurried to read it: AVALANCHE ZONE. DO NOT STOP.
The river widened into a small lake, its surface uneasy, and then it snarled its way out the other end. A distant whop-whop brought her to a halt. She searched the sky. The whopping intensified. A yellow copter throttled into sight.
Alexa got excited. If she could get the pilot’s attention, he could land. She’d be able to explain about the bones and get him to notify authorities.
She waved her poles back and forth, hoped her bright-blue raincoat would draw the pilot’s eye, even though she was a half mile away. The bird hovered over the landslide. Over the bone field. The pilot would see the destruction, the severed path, the yellow tape, and her green tarp covering the bones. Alexa ran in a clumsy circle, sloshing through puddles, flailing her arms. The copter dipped over the tape area, hovering like a fat osprey eyeing a fish. Alexa started running toward it, but after a few yards, the copter lifted and veered off toward Clinton Hut.
Her heart sank. The rain started again. She got mad and beheaded a stalk of grass with her pole. She whacked another. And another. Guillotined husks littered the path. The authorities needed to be notified, and her chance to do that had just flown away. Hiking sucked. She calmed herself by remembering Charlie as a little boy. After Mom died, she and Charlie and Dad had banded together, become a ragtag team. Dad took them on Saturday-morning hikes. Umpstead Park. Hanging Rock. Neuse River Trail. Charlie, with his mop of uncombed curls, always lagged behind, irritating Alexa.
But he was only four or five. I was awful.
She was glad Charlie had confided in her. She wished she knew how to comfort him. She had failed as a kid. Now it was time to step up. Step forward like she was doing right now. But she didn’t know what to say. The path meandered along a mountain flank, farther from the river, making Alexa nervous about another rock slip. Pulsing in the air caused her to turn. She watched the copter maneuver back, enlarging from yellow dot to incoming aircraft, the grass waving in its wake. The rpm of the rotors increased, became deafening. A bulk bag dangled from its belly.
He’d come back with a load of rocks.
Alexa raised her poles, waved them. The copter dipped vertically over the landslide, where she figured it would hover again, but it flew past, toward her. Hope flooded back as she watched, her poles in the air. The copter homed in on her. Yes! But it accelerated instead of slowing, the bulk bag skimming the ground. She could see the pilot’s face through the windscreen. Helmet. Sunglasses. Weird again because of the rain. She waved madly. The stalks of grass edging the path flattened in the downdraft, the bag of rocks closing in, coming at her. Alexa ducked.
“Dammit,” she screamed at the ground. “You’re too low.” She looked up, confused.
A ton of rock bore down on her like a runaway freight train.
Alexa dove flat. The copter hovered just ahead. She lifted her head, watched as pendulum physics played out in front of her eyes. The lethal mass of rock was swinging back. She flattened, protected her head with her hands, her mouth pressed against moss. She heard and felt the bulk bag whir by. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Caught her breath. She pushed her chest up with her arms and watched the helicopter and its lethal cargo dart away. She scrambled to her feet, awkwardly because of her pack, and held her hands like WTF.
“Moron,” she yelled. She had dropped her poles and now scooped them up.
All she could figure was that the pilot forgot he had the load of rocks, and had tried to land. A huge mistake. She expected an apology. A dip of the bird. A hand signal. Mouth open, she watched the copter circle around, dip, come at her, the bag of rocks still suspended from a chain, careening her way.
This was no apology.
She dove as the bag whizzed by. She could feel the rotor downwash. Feel her heart pound her rib cage. She lifted her head. What goes up must come down, oscillation, she remembered from physics, and waited out Bulk Bag’s return path, her skull throbbing in anticipation, the rotor noise deafening. The bag passed in a heavy whoosh, lower than her full five feet seven inches, and would pass again, its arc diminished, if she waited. She sprang to her feet and ran. With all her might. A glimpse of green woods ahead, a safe harbor. Alexa tore like Justify, the Triple Crown winner, all the time rationalizing: He didn’t see me. He didn’t see me.
The valley tapered. Trees appeared. Her legs shook as she reached the tunnel of green. Safety. If a bench appeared along the track, she’d sink onto it thankfully. Catch her breath. Call the police.
As if. There was no reception in these three million acres of national park. She stopped, bent over, pack riding up on her shoulders, hands on knees. What just happened?
Then she shuddered. The helicopter might land, the pilot might follow her into the woods. Try to kill her again.
Try. To. Kill. Me.
She straightened, cringing as her burn scars protested. She tightened her waist belt to ease the weight on her shoulders and loped ahead like the prey of a large flying carnivore.
It had to be an accident. He hadn’t seen her, was trying to find a spot for the rocks.
No. He was trying to knock her head off.
Maybe he was trying to scare her. Have some fun at the expense of the tourist.
An accident. The rain made it hard for the pilot to see. Helicopters had blind spots.
Alexa vacillated for half a mile while checking over her shoulder. Kill. Fun. Negligence. The river had twisted off to torment someone else. Mud, puddles, and decaying matter muffled her footsteps. Ferns—high and low—dripped everywhere. Filmy fern. Palm fern. Tree fern. Silver fern. Red stems. Green stems. Furry stems. Furled stems. She stabbed a fiddle fern with her pole, and watched it quiver.
Why the hell hadn’t the other hikers, Like Charlie, come to find her?
A crashing sound made her whip around. Holy crap. It was one of those New Zealand pigeons on steroids. Four times as large as the pigeons at home. Iridescent and ungainly. Flying low, then high, then off. Kererū. She had seen one on Stewart Island.
If the pilot had been trying to kill her, why? Was it because of the skeleton? Had she released some curse by removing the belt buckle?
Or taking the thumb bone?
The trees, close and tall, had stringy peeling bark and were smothered with hanging vines, goblin moss, lichen, and parasitic orchids. Plants dependent on other plants. Alexa wasn’t dependent on anyone. For once, her independence made her feel vulnerable. But not helpless. She had the skills and brain to get out of trouble.
A sign ahead caused her heart to leap. But it was for Prairie Shelter, not a hut or lodge. The deserted shelter consisted of pilings with a tin roof. She stopped to catch her breath, but the openness made her uneasy—so she took a swallow of her water and hit the trail.
For an hour she tramped through steady rain, the trail empty and gloomy. She had no idea how a person could get used to hiking in rain, but she barely noticed it. The pattering on her hood was white noise. She hurried, picturing Charlie’s sweet childhood face, and his harder-to-get-used-to adult face—he looked more like Dad now.
The path, banked by a cliff, was flooded. She remembered the ranger’s warning about flash floods and jabbed a pole to measure the depth. Eight or ten inches. A rivulet tangling over the cliff was the culprit. It leaped and plunged and blew mist. She stepped over immersed rocks and roots. The path dipped, turned, and led to wooden steps disappearing down a thicket. Alexa gripped the slimy rail, counted twelve slippery steps. At the bottom, a small clearing opened to a swing bridge.
The river beneath it was a crescendo of force.
A waterfall—maybe a hundred feet high—fed the river. Jaw-dropping beautiful, she supposed. A sign said POMPOLONA CREEK. Ha. Like Niagara is a creek. She imagined writing Dad and Rita a postcard: On day two of Milford Track, I found a skeleton and someone tried to smash my head with a bag of rocks. Wish you were here.
Thinking of Rita always made her back scars taut, always made her think of that day she was thirteen and skidded across the kitchen linoleum in her socks, straight into her stepmother as she poured boiling water from a kettle. The top came off and the water poured down Alexa’s back, melting her shirt into her skin. She hated the months afterward—pain, skin grafts, physical therapy. But even more she hated the cold look in Rita’s eyes as she watched Alexa writhe on the floor.
Dad, Charlie, and her therapist tried to convince her the scalding was an accident. Her own clumsy fault. And she had, in recent years, started to accept it might be the truth.
But still.
She shuddered and walked closer to the bridge. The unrepentant sky pelted her with rain as she looked down. Volkswagen-sized boulders were slick with moss. Froth and mayhem funneled between them. The violence of nature took her breath.
The bridge was narrow—one-person wide, with a coiled metal handrail. Three wooden steps, covered with nonslip chicken wire, led up to the suspended structure. A sign warned it could support only three hikers at a time. Alexa looked over her shoulder, aware of being alone in the great sweep of forest. No one appeared, but fear settled on her shoulder like a hawk, its talons razor-sharp. She was between a landslide and a wild river.
Damn Charlie. Why had he left her behind?